Developed World Needs a BASIC Lesson in Durban

Climate change seems all but forgotten thanks to the economic crisis, especially the European Union's (rather eurozone's) debt crisis. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, is just 16 days away, but international media coverage has been thin compared with Bali 2007 or Copenhagen 2009.

Money has been more important for us than the environment, or else we wouldn't have ravaged our planet mercilessly enough to threaten tens of millions of years of nature's works in just a few decades.

If that is the case, why did fighting climate change seem possible just before, and even after, the Bali climate conference in 2007 May be the Bali Road Map, a set of decisions representing the various tracks seen as key to reaching a global climate deal, had something to do with it.

The Bali Road Map includes the Bali Action Plan, which launched "a new comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention (UNFCCC) through long-term cooperative action, now up to and beyond 2012", with the aim of reaching an agreed outcome and adopting a decision at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.

But the Copenhagen conference failed on that score. All eyes were then trained on Cancun in Mexico in 2010. Unfortunately, Cancun managed to save the UN negotiating process instead of taking measures to prevent the Earth from boiling out of control.

And now we are moving toward Durban.

The Bali conference had raised hopes perhaps because the world then was not aware that a financial storm was brewing in the US which would devastate most of the rest of the world later. Perhaps the IPCC report issued before the Bali conference made the world sit up.

The climate conferences in Poznan, Poland, in 2008, and Copenhagen and Cancun were swept in the tide generated by the global economic storm. Today, the eurozone debt crisis is all the news. From Ireland to Greece, and now presumably Italy, the eurozone has its hands full. Who knows, Spain and Portugal could follow next.

The world is going into a tizzy, because the fate of Europe and the US, the self-proclaimed leaders of the world, has always been more important than that of the entire planet.

But the times have changed and the tables turned. Now, Europe and the US need the emerging developing economies, especially China and also India, Brazil and South Africa (or the BASIC countries), to pull them out of the financial mess of their own making.

Just about two weeks ago, the BASIC countries met in Beijing and reached a consensus on a range of issues, including the Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol. After the meeting, China's top climate change official Xie Zhenhua said: "Countries should take action and put their promises into practice before 2020 and then discuss the issues after that date on the basis of scientific analysis."

According to the protocol, developed countries are subject to binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions, while developing economies make their cuts on a voluntary basis.

The BASIC countries' representatives in Beijing agreed that the Durban talks should achieve a comprehensive, fair and balanced outcome, for which the Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol is an "essential priority".

The representatives said that financing will be another pressing priority in Durban, and agreed that the conference should initiate the operation of the Green Climate Fund to ensure adequate financial support for the developing countries to adapt to climate change. In Cancun, the developed countries agreed to provide $30 billion as "fast-start" funding for the project and then increase it to $100 billion a year between 2013 and 2020 to avoid a funding gap.

But the funds have not been forthcoming as "fast" as they should have - and that is not only because the developed world has been trying to tame the Frankenstein's monster called the financial and debt crises.

Perhaps this is the best time for the emerging economies to get the developed world to do some good for a change. At the climate conference in Durban, they should ask Europe and the US to fulfill their promises (like providing funds for the Green Climate Fund) and agree to new ones (like the Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol) in exchange for helping them out of the economic mess.